Bombshell Report: Journalist Accidentally Included in Top-Secret Houthi Strike Chat
By Admin
Washington, D.C. – President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his national security advisor, Michael Waltz, after reports surfaced that Waltz had inadvertently added a journalist to a confidential Signal thread discussing military actions against Houthi targets in Yemen.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said in a phone interview with NBC News when questioned about his continued confidence in Waltz following the revelation.
The controversy erupted after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, disclosed that he had been unexpectedly added to a Signal chat titled “Houthi PC small group” on March 13. The thread, which reportedly included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, contained discussions related to military strikes later executed on March 15.
Trump attributed the mishap to a lower-level staffer rather than Waltz himself. “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there,” the president claimed, attempting to downplay the severity of the error.
A National Security Council spokesperson confirmed the Signal group's authenticity but described the journalist’s inclusion as an accident. “We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” the spokesperson told The Atlantic.
Despite official confirmations, Trump and his administration have been keen to refute Goldberg’s characterization of the incident. Hegseth dismissed claims that classified military operations were discussed in the thread, stating, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also pushed back against accusations that sensitive information was leaked. “No ‘war plans’ were discussed,” she asserted in a statement.
Goldberg, however, remained firm in his reporting. “That’s a lie. He was texting war plans, he was texting attack plans,” he said in a Monday night CNN interview, doubling down on his explosive allegations.
The incident is expected to be a major point of discussion at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Worldwide Threats” hearing on Tuesday morning, where Gabbard and Ratcliffe are scheduled to testify. The hearing, set to commence at 10 a.m. ET, is likely to probe the security protocols surrounding high-level government communications and the potential risks posed by such breaches.
With tensions escalating over both the leak and the administration’s handling of military operations in Yemen, the political fallout from this episode is far from over.
Source:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/25/trump-signal-war-plans-texts-waltz.html